Acquiring information about a distance to a subject from autofocus (AF) information in a digital camera or a video camera and using the thus-acquired information to another function have hitherto been carried out. For instance, the distance information is used for automatically determining a photographic scene, such as a close-up, a portrait, a landscape, or the like, in accordance with information about a distance to a subject, to thus automatically set capturing conditions of a digital camera; determining whether or not light from a flash (hereinafter called “flash light”) has arrived at a subject during flash photography in accordance with information about a distance to the subject; estimating the degree of contribution of flash light and the degree of contribution of stationary light through use of an automatic white balance in accordance with information about a distance to a subject; and the like.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-344891 describes an apparatus which has face recognition means for recognizing whether or not a subject includes a face and means for detecting the state of the subject and which sets a photographic mode in accordance with the result of recognition of a face and the detected state of the subject. Motion of the subject, the position of the subject, the brightness of the subject, or the like, is used as the state of the subject, and one of the scene modes is distinguished from normal mode, portrait mode, landscape mode, night-view mode, close up mode or sports mode.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 3626101 discloses determining the quantity of flash light from a distance to a subject when the accuracy of measurement of the subject is higher than predetermined accuracy, or firing preliminary flash light to thus determine the distance to the subject when the measurement accuracy is lower than the predetermined accuracy; and adopting the distance to the subject having a higher degree of accuracy to thus determine the quantity of flash light.
There is a case where information about a distance to a subject acquired by an autofocus mechanism is sufficient for controlling a focus of a subject but insufficient for use in determining the photographic scene, or the like, as in the case mentioned above. Specifically, when a deep focus depth is achieved with a short focal distance of a photographing lens and a low aperture; namely, when an autofocus operation is controlled at close range by means of a so-called hill-climbing autofocus, the main subject falls within the focus depth immediately when focusing is set within one meter even in the case where the main subject is located in the vicinity of three meters, and there may arises a case where the autofocus operation has become interrupted at that point in time. In this case, the autofocus operation has already fallen within the focus depth, and hence focusing has been achieved. However, when the distance from the position of the photographing lens to the subject achieved at that time is computed, there is a chance of outputting information that the main subject falls within one meter even when the main subject is actually located at a position of three meters. Accordingly, when range information about an autofocus operation is used, in unmodified form, for determining a photographic scene, there arises a case where a scene, which is at a distance of several meters or more to a subject and should be determined to be a landscape scene, is erroneously determined to be a close-up.